Research from Mimecast indicates that UK businesses are overlooking the growing use of BlackBerry services when putting together their business continuity contingency plans

Mimecast has revealed research findings showing that business continuity plans have not extended to cover the BlackBerry service, despite the mobile email service's growing importance in UK businesses.

The research, among IT managers and users on the first day of the Infosecurity conference in London, reveals that while 48% of IT managers report BlackBerry downtime at least once a quarter, only 44% of those who have a BlackBerry Enterprise Server have any continuity strategy for the service. This compares to 75% of all respondents having email continuity - arguably also a low figure considering the importance of the technology to business productivity.

Both IT managers and IT users polled at the show dreaded email downtime; 55% of IT managers said it causes the most vocal complaints and 47.5% of IT users complained that it causes the most disruption to their day. BlackBerry downtime falls into the top three most vocal complaints directed at IT managers (33%) and 31% of IT users agree that BlackBerry downtime is one of the top three technology disruptors to their day. Other options were internet access, file servers, databases and phones.

Peter Bauer, founder and CEO of Mimecast, said: "Despite being a relatively new-kid-on-the-block in the enterprise IT department, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server is becoming ever more critical to smooth business operations because of the proven productivity gains that BlackBerry brings. In light of this, it's a concern that half of the organisations that are coming to depend on the mobile solution have no continuity system to ensure downtime doesn't impact on the business. With 25% of the organisations we spoke to not having an email continuity service at all, it is probably fair to say that for many BlackBerry should be a key consideration in a wider requirement for full email continuity."

Mimecast has been providing continuity services to hundreds of thousands of email users around the world over the last seven years. Yesterday the company announced Mimecast Continuity Services for the BlackBerry Wireless Solution; a world first in BlackBerry continuity. Mimecast's BlackBerry continuity service enables users to send and receive email on their BlackBerry in the event of scheduled or unplanned mail server, BlackBerry Enterprise Server or BlackBerry NOC outages.

Mimecast Continuity Services for the BlackBerry Wireless Solution is on demonstration for the first time at this week's Infosecurity Europe conference and exhibition in London, and will be available to customers from July 2010.